Women Who Left Bad Online Reviews of Plastic Surgeon Being Sued

Beyond the fact that the doctor's action is going to have the opposite effect of what he wants, there's a bigger issue. The rise of "reputation" sites like Yelp presents us with new challenges. Previously, it was a bit easier to manage one's reputation. A past bad act or customer complaint wouldn't be immortalized forever on the internet. Even our own postings get archived for anyone in the future to see (and people are starting to care about what they post on sites like Facebook).

On one hand, this is problematic if the statements are libelous (and I'm not saying that they are in this case, but libelous statements do happen). The Streisand effect means, to an extent, that we don't want to draw attention to libelous things said about us since it will bring more attention to them. Whether the claim is true or false, fighting it might bring us greater harm. And some statements are untrue.

On the other hand, this might change the way we view people. Right now, we tend to think that a (singular) bad mark is indicative of a pattern. The thought is that if someone was arrested once, they likely did many other bad acts that they weren't caught for. Likewise, a few embarrassing photos on Facebook are sometimes thought of as evidence that someone wouldn't be a good hire. However, if we find that more and more of our lives are documented, maybe people will stop thinking that a blemish or two on a person's record means that they're a bad person - it could just mean that they're human and interacting with the world.

Personally, I wonder if this fear of documentation might be holding us back. Someone doesn't want their failure documented and so they privately don't try for something. Has anyone else not launched something because of fear of criticism - criticism that would be immortalized online?

It gives me a sick feeling in my stomach and a headache just to think of all this again.

From the article, quoting the lawyer of one of the women being sued: "Her breasts look terrible. I mean, I hate the way she looks. She looks so bad..."

What kind of lawyer would talk like that?

This doctor is not one of those cases. Seems to be a very web savy practice. He has contributed articles, pictures and diagrams to lots of sites. It's the kind of thing and internet marketing / SEO company would be recommending. One of the reviews mentions being convinced to choose him due to his web presence. I would not be surprised if a lot of his business comes this way. Of surgeons in his area, he's probably one of the prominent online. http://www.google.com.au/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&...

Now google him, and it's bad news. I would be surprised if his phone isn't ringing a lot less.

The good news is that it's very hard to win a libel judgement against somebody in the U.S. — as far as I know, you have to show that somebody said something they knew to be false and did so with the malicious intent of harming you.

Can you imagine sitting in the hospital waiting room ready for surgery, when you decide to whip out the smartphone and look up your surgeon on Yelp? It's like something out of Monty Python